The Courtesan, the Dandy, and the Birth of Ars Erotica as Theater in India

E-book $10.00 to $40.00About E-booksISBN: 9780226348582
Published
June 2016

The Kamasutra is best known in the West for its scandalous celebration of unbridled sensuality. Yet, there is much, much more to it; embedded in the text is a vision of the city founded on art and aesthetic pleasure. In Foucault and the "Kamasutra", Sanjay K. Gautam lays out the nature and origin of this iconic Indian text and engages in the first serious reading of its relationship with Foucault.

Gautam shows how closely intertwined the history of erotics in Indian culture is with the history of theater-aesthetics grounded in the discourse of love, and Foucault provides the framework for opening up an intellectual horizon of Indian thought. To do this, Gautam looks to the history of three inglorious characters in classical India: the courtesan and her two closest male companions—her patron, the dandy consort; and her teacher and advisor, the dandy guru. Foucault’s distinction between erotic arts and the science of sexuality drives Gautam’s exploration of the courtesan as a symbol of both sexual-erotic and aesthetic pleasure. In the end, by entwining together Foucault’s works on the history of sexuality in the West and the classical Indian texts on eros, Gautam transforms our understanding of both, even as he opens up new ways of investigating erotics, aesthetics, gender relations, and subjectivity.

1 Foucault and the Notion of Ars Erotica: Pleasure as Desubjectivation 2 Pleasure and Patriarchy: The Discourse of Dharma and the Figure of the Wife 3 The Courtesan and the Birth of Ars Erotica asTheater 4 The Courtesan and the Origins of the Na?yasastra: From Ars Erotica to Ars Theatrica 5 The Dandy-Guru and the Birth of the Discourses of Erotics and Theater 6 The City Dandy and the Vision of the City Based on Art 7 Foucault and the Kamasutra: Parting Ways

Notes Bibliography Index

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